The Maltese Falcon (Audio dramatization)

9781433252495: The Maltese Falcon (Audio dramatization)
View all copies of this ISBN edition:
 
 
A treasure worth killing for. Sam Spade, a slightly shop-worn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. A perfumed grifter named Joel Cairo, a fat man named Gutman, and Brigid O'Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime. These are the ingredients of Dashiell Hammett's coolly glittering gem of detective fiction, a novel that has haunted three generations of readers.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:
Sam Spade, Dashiell Hammett's archetypally tough San Francisco detective, is more noir than L.A. Confidential and more vulnerable than Raymond Chandler's Marlowe. In The Maltese Falcon, the best known of Hammett's Sam Spade novels (including The Dain Curse and The Glass Key), Spade is tough enough to bluff the toughest thugs and hold off the police, risking his reputation when a beautiful woman begs for his help, while knowing that betrayal may deal him a new hand in the next moment.

Spade's partner is murdered on a stakeout; the cops blame him for the killing; a beautiful redhead with a heartbreaking story appears and disappears; grotesque villains demand a payoff he can't provide; and everyone wants a fabulously valuable gold statuette of a falcon, created as tribute for the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV. Who has it? And what will it take to get it back? Spade's solution is as complicated as the motives of the seekers assembled in his hotel room, but the truth can be a cold comfort indeed.

Spade is bigger (and blonder) in the book than in the movie, and his Mephistophelean countenance is by turns seductive and volcanic. Sam knows how to fight, whom to call, how to rifle drawers and secrets without leaving a trace, and just the right way to call a woman "Angel" and convince her that she is. He is the quintessence of intelligent cool, with a wise guy's perfect pitch. If you only know the movie, read the book. If you're riveted by Chinatown or wonder where Robert B. Parker's Spenser gets his comebacks, read the master. --Barbara Schlieper

From the Back Cover:
"Dashiell Hammett. . . is a master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer." --The Boston Globe

"The Maltese Falcon is not only probably the best detective story we have ever read, it is an exceedingly well written novel."--The Times Literary Supplement (London)

"Hammett's prose [is] clean and entirely unique. His characters [are] as sharply and economically defined as any in American fiction."--The New York Times

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

(No Available Copies)

Search Books:



Create a Want

If you know the book but cannot find it on AbeBooks, we can automatically search for it on your behalf as new inventory is added. If it is added to AbeBooks by one of our member booksellers, we will notify you!

Create a Want

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780679722649: The Maltese Falcon

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  ISBN 13:  9780679722649
Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 1992
Softcover

  • 9780752865331: The Maltese falcon

    Orion, 2005
    Softcover

  • 9781857152630: The Maltese Falcon / The Thin Man / Red Harvest (Everyman's Library Classics)

    Random..., 2000
    Hardcover

  • 9780848824365: Maltese Falcon

    Amereo..., 1928
    Hardcover

  • 9780394717722: MALTESE FALCON V772

    Vintag..., 1972
    Softcover

Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace